The changing prioritization of environmental protection in Britain: 1982-2019

Kenny, John (2024) The changing prioritization of environmental protection in Britain: 1982-2019. Government and Opposition, 59 (1). pp. 168-186. ISSN 0017-257X

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Abstract

This article examines the evolution of long-term trends in the prioritization of environmental protection in Britain over a period of four decades. It does so by compiling comparable questions tapping into the same underlying environmental dimension from a range of sources, including historical polling data that has only recently been made available to the research community. At the aggregate level, prioritization largely tracks changing economic conditions as well as key environmental events, with the winter of 2019 showing the highest recorded levels. Furthermore, trends in individuals' willingness to prioritize the environment may not always go in tandem with trends in environmental salience. At the individual level, educational attainment is the only consistently significant demographic correlate over time. However, there is evidence of increasing politicization of the environment, with left-right orientations only becoming an important correlate of environmental prioritization in recent years, in line with rising divergence on the issue at the elite level.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Ben Clements, Peter Enns, Will Jennings, Joan Madia, Andra Roescu, Riley Taiji, Giacomo Vagni and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on previous drafts that greatly improved the article. An earlier version of the article was presented at the 2020 Environmental Social Sciences workshop at the University of Bern, and the author is grateful for feedback received at this. This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ESRC ES/S000380/1).
Uncontrolled Keywords: environment,public opinion,attitudes,britain,politicisation,values,environment,attitudes,values,public opinion,politicization,sociology and political science,public administration ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups: University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 05 Apr 2022 10:30
Last Modified: 03 Jan 2024 03:01
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/84470
DOI: 10.1017/gov.2022.17

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